Since I enjoy writing “Crushes & Hexes” so much, in the coming weeks, the blog will continue to feature breaking news updates from Ryan, while I focus only on regular features and product reviews. The newest addition to our features is “Round Up & Release,” a compilation of the biggest stories and developments from the speech tech world. While “Crushes & Hexes” focuses on the tech community as a whole, RR&R is just about speech. I hope you like it – it will appear every Thursday on the blog. As always, keep the comments coming, and send us feedback! Seriously, Ryan and I get all giddy when our readers comment. Sad but true — it’s the small things. Full post after the jump!

* One of Speech Tech‘s buddies, Nick Ezzo, wrote an interesting post on the TuVox blog about the Get Human article that appeared in a February issue of Business Week magazine. While BW seems to think Get Human is dun-zo, Nick has some different ideas: mainly, that companies realize people may want to speak to a real person (especially if they have a poor IVR), but that improving IVR apps will help more people realize the benefits of self service. Holla if ya heard — we’re with Nick on this one. [TuVox Blog, Business Week, Get Human]

* Ryan and I love covering speech in mobile phones – it should be fairly obvious, looking at our list of mobile-tagged posts. But my friend over at SugarCRM, Martin Schneider, brought up some interesting points about how the Android phone could affect UC within organizations on his blog. Since we’re mainly concerned with speech on these apps, Ryan and I never think too far outside that mindset. Martin’s main point: “Unified communications – between individuals, inside organizations, and between companies – is nearly impossible given the proliferation of mobile platforms.” Ooooh, burn! [Speech Tech Blog, CRM Outsiders]

* Yesterday, we talked about Passover’s Four Questions translated into Klingon. Today, we bring you Microsoft‘s announcement that it has developed software that will make it easier for Star Wars fans to build their own R2D2, complete with speech technologies (speech recognition, voice controls, speech synthesis). One company, Paris’ Aldebaran Robotics, has already developed the first “domestic servant robot” with the software. OK…this is getting too Jetsons for me. [Information Week, Aldebaran Robotics]

* SpeechCycle reported on their presentations and announcements at the ICASSP in Vegas. Links galore in the article. [SpeechCycle Blog]